Lily Cao is a venture capital partner at Granite Asia who brings an unusual academic background combining economics and Russian philosophy from universities in Russia and China, plus over 20 years of marketing and communications experience helping startups with growth strategy. She runs Platform Services across Asia Pacific for the firm while maintaining a very public presence through her LinkedIn following of over 20,000 and hosting a podcast with over 1 billion clicks, positioning herself as both an active thought leader in AI ecosystems and a hands-on supporter of portfolio companies across sectors from smart farming to AI infrastructure.